


Dudley Dursley

by Irisen



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Clever!Dudley, Dudley-centric, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, One-Shot, Pre-Canon, Slytherin!Dudley, and really twisted, at least in the way he thinks, basically an AU in which Dudley is really clever, but not evil, darkish, introspective, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 05:34:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8477272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irisen/pseuds/Irisen
Summary: He was not a nice person, he was a selfish one. He was also clever and always knew how to perfectly hide himself in order not to be found by anyone. He was a lot of things, most of them unexpected, and was perfectly happy to let people believe anything they wanted, as long as it kept him from Them.Harry had no such chance, he could not hide, even if he wanted to. Day after day, he was forced to confront them, them and their darkness. Dudley pitied him but he knew that, should something happen, he would not be able to do anything to help his cousin.However, that did not mean he wanted him dead, he was selfish, not evil.





	

 

Hiding was easy for him, hiding was something he had always done, even if he did not realise it until very recently.

He was not a coward, not really, but he also was not a total idiot and he could recognize danger when he saw it. He did not like danger and, to avoid it, he learned very early how to hide behind people, how to make sure he would not be hurt by putting someone else in the path of the menace. He did that with Harry, he did that with the people at his school, he did that with everyone.

People thought he was stupid just because he was not able to read very well. They tried to help him at first, and, were he a normal, non-Dursley child, it may have worked and things may have gone differently. But he was a Dursely so they did not. He never got the help he could have had when he was younger and now his teachers had given up on him and, at ten years old, he could barely read and had trouble with simple additions.

The thing was, he probably would be able to get better if he really tried, he was quite good at maths when he tried it in the beginning and it was only when the teachers stopped paying attention to him that he started to have trouble with it. He had the potential to get at least a passable grade in this class, but he did not. Because he didn't care.

 

School, he learned very early, was not useful to someone like him. It was made for people like Harry, who were clever but, ultimately, weak. People who needed guidance and had to rely on knowledge to get by in life. He was not like them. His father was rich, richer than he let on, and his family had ties in all sort of businesses.

He could do very well for himself without going to school at all. With a family such as his he would always find help.

 

Plus, the idiotic face of Dudley Dursley was one of the best way to hide in plain sight, one of the best way to be underestimated, no one would go after a child like him, who was annoying but so, so weak.

He was not weak of course, he was the opposite of weak.

 

Dudley Dursley was not just an act, however. In fact, he shared a lot of traits with his persona and selfishness was one of them. He was self-centered and he knew it. It did not bother him much, all he wanted in life was peace and safety for him and the ones he loved, nothing more, nothing less, he was just like everyone else.

The only difference he had with everyone else was, of course, his parents. They were a very special kind of people. The bad kind an outsider might say. But Dudley, who lived with them and saw what they were capable of, knew that 'bad' did not quite cut it, 'evil' was more appropriate.

His parents were evil people, monsters amongst humans, beasts that tried to disguise themselves, to blend in with the civilized world but Dudley was able to see them for what they really were and, for some reason, he seemed to be the only one with this ability.

 

They were not always like this, he knew it. He even remembered it. Since he was so bad at reading and writing, his memory had become one of his primary tools and he had tried to sharpen by remembering events that happened a long time ago and that was how he realized that his parents had changed, a lot.

They were not good people when Harry came in, they were like him, selfish and afraid, hiding behind faces and a good, respectable life. But they were not the dark, twisted persons they now were. He remembered how, as the years passed, they became more and more violent. This violence was not physical, it was more of a deeply buried hatred that would sometime resurface, a darkness in their heart that would not go away.

They hated Harry so much that he sometimes wondered why they never hit him, why they seemed to stop at pushes and, sometimes, frying pans. He knew it was not a good thing, to hit someone who was not able to defend themselves, but his parents wanted to do it and there was nothing he would be able to do if they finally did.

The darkness in them was so strong that the only way he had to make sure he would be safe from them was to hide behind Harry, act like his parents and avoid their anger. He had to be on their side or they might, one day, turn against him.

 

This way of thinking shaped his whole behaviour ; he started picking his friends, chosing the ones that behaved the most like his dad's "mates". He established himself as the leader of their small gang by proving that he was stronger than any of them, beating them until they recognized his superiority. After that, he started hitting other people, innocent ones, because Vernon liked it when he was feared, which meant he would likely appreciate that his son was too.

It was bad, but it was fun.

 

It was in times like this that he could feel it, deep inside of him, the darkness, the same one that was in his parent's hearts. It seemed it was a family thing, he thought, one day, while beating savagely a boy two years older than him, maybe all Dursleys were monsters.

And if that was true, the only one who was really human at the 4th Privet Drive was Harry, and he was the one who was called 'Freak'.

It was almost funny.

 

He continued beating people, bringing them down and making his father proud, doing anything to avoid becoming another Harry.

 

There was only one limit he gave himself, a very dangerous one considering his goal of pleasing Vernon, but it was about something that he could just not do.

He did not hurt Harry.

Ever.

He did not call him names, he did not punch him, he did not run after him, he did not help him either, of course. If Piers wanted to kick his cousin in the face so hard that his nose was broken, well it was their problem, and he did not want to be brought into it.

He was strictly neutral towards Harry, he never spoke to him, never even aknowledged his existence. There was something of a truce between them, not that they ever established it : Dudley would leave his cousin alone and, in return, he was never affected by te younger boy's strange abilities, unlike most people around them.

 

He was not stupid, he was even quite clever, and observant too. He knew very well that Harry was special, and that his parents knew it. Except that his parents didn't know that he knew. And Harry didn't even know what it was that they knew, once again he was the exception : Of the four of them, he was the only one not to know about his own powers. It was really ridiculous.

There were a little random, Harry's powers. He could do many things, like change the colors of objects or make things burn, break, shrink. He even managed to fly once, Dudley saw it himself. It was all very impressive but it was also terribly dangerous, both for Harry and the people around him.

 

Harry was his cousin, maybe that sort of stuff was genetic. He hoped not.

 

He was strictly neutral towards the strange child most of the times, there were some exceptions but they did not happen often.

 

One day, not long before Christmas, he went to London. It was without his parents and he did not have the autorisation to use the bus on his own. That did not stop him from doing it but it was none the less stressful. In his whole life, he had never disobeyed the elder Dursleys' orders, Harry's example was enough to dissuade him.

But Aunt Marge was at home and, while he usually loved dogs more than any other animals, the ones she owned were a bit more violent than the average canines and he had grown tired of seeing Harry getting chased by her rottweiler.

 

Plus, he was ten. Ten and he did not really know anything about himself, he did not even know what kind of music he liked, or even if he liked music at all.

Dudley was selfish, and, even if he tried to hide it, he was not quite normal. Not in the same way that his cousin was, of course, but he was probably enough of a freak for his parents to direct some of their darkness towards him. He did not want it, he liked his comfortable life and did not want to give it up.

 

He drank a hot chocolate and bought himself some books he could bring home without his parents getting suspicious. One was about a young girl that was also a genius detective, one was a children history book about the pyramids and the third one, which was the most dangerous for him, was a collection of old fairy tales from a danish man named Hans Christian Andersen.

Since they were all fairly differents, he hoped he would find at least one type of story that he liked.

 

Dudley had a lot of money. Every month, his father gave him several ten pounds bills and, this december, he had gotten six of them. It was a lot for a boy like him and, asides from the few sweets he bought after school to satisfy his 'friends', he never really used it. Harry had nothing.

Harry had no money, Harry had no clothes other than Dudley's old ones, which were too big for him anyway.

 

In his cupboard with only a small, thin blanket, no source of heat and clothes that were too big for him and not fit for cold temperatures, Harry was bound to get sick.

And Dudley knew that his parents would do nothing to get him back to health : the one time they bought him glasses was painful enough for them. They would not help.

 

If he got really sick and no one cured him, maybe Harry was going to die.

 

The boy thought about the situation. On one side, he did not want his cousin to die but, on the other, if he was caught helping him, his parents were going to be furious and he would not be able to hide again.

 

In the end, he decided to switch Harry's old blanket with a new and warmer one and, after some reflexion, he determined that his mother was surely not going to notice if her nephew wore a pair of mittens or not when he walked to school. A scarf might be to obvious, though, so he chose to buy a pair of warm pullovers that were big enough to look like some of his old ones.

 

Harry was powerful and Harry was family. Dudley did not want him to die. He could not help him if his parents finally cracked and tried to kill him, because he was selfish and did not want to become their new target, but he could help him survive the winter, as long as no one knew it was him who saved the pariah of Privet Drive.

 

He was not a very sentimental person, he was more practical than anything, but he knew Harry was and, even so he didn't put the new clothes and blanket in his cousin cupboard on the day of Christmas, he still took some time to wrap the pulls and the mittens in nice green and red packets that he put on his bed along with a note that only said "Don't tell anyone".

It took him some times to write it but it was necessary.

 

He did not feel happy or satisfied afterwards, he only felt as if he had just accomplished his duty, there was no thrill to it, no joy of having helped someone in need. He had done what he had to do and that was it.

 

Dudley Dursley was a very unique child indeed. 

**Author's Note:**

> Short story about Dudley. I like him a lot and I enjoy playing with his character, changing some of his basic traits, writing stuff about it and seeing the result.  
> At first this OS was supposed to be about a superpowered Dudley but it kind of got out of hand ... This Dudley is not superpowered, he is just ... weird. I guess. I still like him.  
> Hope you enjoyed this OS ! There might be a sequel but, since I only seem to write when I'm stressed and very busy (yeah I know, weird) I'm sure of nothing ! However, since, as I said before, I really like Dudley (well, I like to write about Dudley) there will probably be more stories about him in the future !  
> Have a good day/night !


End file.
